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MAGISTRATE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A lay judge or civil authority who administers the law (especially one who conducts a court dealing with minor offenses)
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("magistrate" is a kind of...):
judge; jurist; justice (a public official authorized to decide questions brought before a court of justice)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "magistrate"):
justice of the peace (a local magistrate with limited powers)
stipendiary; stipendiary magistrate ((United Kingdom) a paid magistrate (appointed by the Home Secretary) dealing with police cases)
Derivation:
magisterial (of or relating to a magistrate)
Context examples:
Evidence of a previous conviction for robbery having been given against the prisoner, the magistrate refused to deal summarily with the offence, but referred it to the Assizes.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Elizabeth soon perceived, that though this great lady was not in commission of the peace of the county, she was a most active magistrate in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to be quarrelsome, discontented, or too poor, she sallied forth into the village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold them into harmony and plenty.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
The magistrate’s signature might not be obtained until next morning.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate, an old benevolent man with calm and mild manners.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of the district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite white, his eyebrows and whiskers still dark, which gives him something of the appearance of a "pere noble de theatre."
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Sir Lothian shrugged his shoulders, and looked blackly at the magistrate.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty pointing to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own name, and I read thus: TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Well, then, you get on a horse, and go to—well, yes, I will!—to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all hands—magistrates and sich—and he'll lay 'em aboard at the Admiral Benbow—all old Flint's crew, man and boy, all on 'em that's left.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: ‘that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.’ And which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to be left to every man’s conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
